> I've always thought that it's time to wipe the slate
> clean but every day it gets harder and harder.
No harder than it's been for the last decade. It "merely"
requires a CPU with over twice the performance of the
next fastest thing, and a credible roadmap for sustaining
that lead for at least five years. Itanic never had that.
Something could come along that does.
> First Sun, now Apple.
Sun may survive being assimilated.
I do wonder about Apple, tho.
> *sigh* x86 will never die.
Nope, but today's AMD64/EM64T would look pretty clean
(and somewhat alien) to an i8008 programmer. Plus,
with most new code being developed in high level langs,
any remaining awkwardness in the architecture is no
longer a real issue.
The limits that x86 placed on end users are also gone,
such as maximum RAM and IRQ count (still only 15 IRQs,
but IRQ sharing on PCI/PCIe and multi-device busses
like USB and '1384 make it irrelevent).
About the only remaining question for x86 is BIOS vs EFI.
> Something could come along that does.
No sooner penned than this news popped up ...
Ex-Alpha designers set to unveil first CPU
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=26214
The PAsemi site itself is rather content-free, so I guess
we'll just have wait and see what comes out of their oven.
That they call themselves "P.A. Semi" is odd, since "PA"
is usually understood to refer to hp's PA-RISC CPU, the
PA standing for Precision Architecture.